Note: GJEL Accident Attorneys regularly sponsors coverage on Streetsblog San Francisco and Streetsblog California. Unless noted in the story, GJEL Accident Attorneys is not consulted for the content or editorial direction of the sponsored content.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously today to reject an appeal for a lengthy environmental review of proposed bicycle and pedestrian improvements to the Hairball, a mess of streets, ramps, sidewalks and bike lanes that come together at the intersection of Cesar Chavez and 101.

As SF Bay reported, the appeal was filed by attorney Mary Miles on behalf of the “Coalition for Adequate Review,” alleging that the project was illegally cut up into smaller pieces to avoid a comprehensive and legally required environmental review.

Sherie George, an environmental planner with the San Francisco Planning Department, told the board that the ‘SFMTA Hairball Intersection Improvement Project‘ involves only minor bike lane improvements, using paint and safe-hit posts, and is thereby not significant enough to require an environmental review. “It will add bike lanes on Bayshore Boulevard … high-visibility crosswalks, the removal of ten parking spaces and two loading zones,” she said, but “…no construction of any permanent structures and no existing travel lanes would be removed.” Thalia Leng, the SFMTA project manager for the plan, said it was intended to address bicycle and pedestrian conflicts with “heavy vehicular volume on north-bound Jerrold Avenue, especially trucks.” She reminded the board that the current design resulted in the fatality of a pedestrian in 2013.

From the SFMTA’s presentation today. Image: SFMTA

Charles Deffarges, community organizer for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, was one of a handful of advocates from the public who spoke against the appeal and against delaying the project. “We have to uphold protected bike lanes especially along high injury corridors like Jerrold Avenue,” he said. No one spoke in favor of the appeal, although Miles filed a written statement, according to the supervisors.

Cesar Chavez at Evans, where the newly approved plan will relieve bike commuters of having to merge with trucks.

Wow, nice to see such idiocy and blatant abuse of environmental law shot down so quickly by the SFMTA board.

Jym Dyer

Don’t worry, the homeless will be a bigger obstacle to cyclists making any progress there, and don’t even think about challenging the leftist’s love affair with the homeless, illegals and any ne’er-do-well.

crazyvag

Theoretically, is it possible to sue lawyer for negligence if a death occurred in an area that was not improved in time?

Corvus Corax

This is not the real Jym Dyer, this is the horrid troll RichLL usurping Jym’s name in a petty tantrum for some slight, real or imagined. Best to ignore him as he thrives on strife.

Corvus Corax

Yup. Totally agree. As a matter of fact, this is the second time the Miles/Anderson team has been shot down trying to block bicycle improvements – they tried to force an EIR for the 8th St bike lane, and failed. Hooray!

Jym Dyer

Maybe you should take your own advice and ignore posts you don’t like?

Daniel M

This reader wants people not to use other people’s names when commenting and would prefer comments on articles about bike and pedestrian improvements not devolve into off-topic political rants.

Everything about transportation issues is political, and the homeless situation is a big problem for people wishing to travel in that immediate area. It’s not just an engineering topic.

Corvus Corax

We all want that. But as you can tell from his reply to your post, it is useless to engage him: he has no interest in discussion, but only wants to ‘win’ each debate, and in his disordered mind, he thinks he bested you and has ‘won’. Aside from posting to expose his trolldom, I almost never reply to him when he tries to bait me into fruitless discussion. I think the thing to do is to click on the down-arrow in the upper right of his comment and select ‘flag as inappropriate’, you will then get a list of reasons for your flagging, and one of them will be ‘impersonation’. If enough people flag him as an impersonator, he will be banned – at least under that name. He will, of course, be back with another sockpuppet identity; he already has been posting as GregKamin, backing up his ‘Jym Dyer’ comments as if from a disinterested party. But at least we can thwart him some of the time – small satisfaction, but some is better than none. Unfortunately there is no way to convince people to ignore him, which of course would be the most effective way of dealing with this nutjob.

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